Read Online Best Intentions by Emily Listfield - Free Book Online

nutrition unit her class did last spring, Claire decided to banish meat from her diet. The children kept a food diary for a week, had it analyzed by a computer and were handed back a detailed sheet listing their numerous deficiencies. Weston takes its mission of preparing students for life seriously. They will have no part in the soda-fueled rise of childhood obesity. I have to say that the school’s approach worked brilliantly. Claire is now obsessed with reading nutrition labels, can rail against artificial sweeteners for an inordinate amount of time and has developed a generally negative feeling toward butter. Whenever I drink a Diet Coke, she lectures me on its supposed carcinogenic effects in much the same way I once lectured my mother about her morning Pall Malls. Claire still devours chocolate chip cookies at Starbucks and keeps a stash of Hershey’s Kisses in her upper desk drawer, but her righteous convictions at the family dinner table are legion. I double-check the box of short-grain organic brown rice—the necessity of using only food produced under fair trade agreements has also recently reared its head. Any day now, I’ll need to put an ethical, political, geographicand nutritional checklist of my daughter’s requirements on the refrigerator.
    When I finally reached Sam earlier in the afternoon and told him about the sale to Merdale, he was suitably outraged on my behalf that Carol hadn’t given me a heads-up. “It’s going to be okay,” he reassured me. “You’re great at your job, they’ll love you.” I shut my eyes and listened to his voice. It has always been my soft spot to rest. I used to love for him to read to me in bed at night, even if it was just a magazine. The words didn’t really matter, it was his timbre, his deep, steady tone that made me feel safe, soothing me to sleep.
    Sam didn’t mention his meeting with a source, male or female, and I didn’t bring it up, but he promised to try to get home by seven, maybe a little after. If nothing else, at least Carol’s missile gave me an excuse to lay claim to my husband.
    I take a sip of wine and stare out the filmy window at the alleyway below. The light is almost completely blocked by other buildings, making it impossible to get an accurate sense of time or weather; it is always the same dusky hourless gray. Everything I was certain—well, almost certain—of just twenty-four hours ago, job, husband, the intrinsic netting of my life, is suddenly flimsy, insubstantial, everything I have taken for granted now seems up for grabs. I lean over the counter and, cupping my hands beneath the window, try to force it open. The right side slides up a quarter inch and I have a brief, thrilling moment of victory before it wheezes and falls below where it was originally.
    â€œFuck.”
    â€œWhat?” I swivel around to see Phoebe standing in the doorway.
    â€œNothing, sweetie.”
    Her eyes narrow. “I’m hungry.”
    â€œDinner is in half an hour. We’re going to wait for Daddy.”
    â€œDo we have to?”
    â€œYes.”
    Phoebe doesn’t budge. I am tempted to plead with her; I may be out of work, your father may be having an affair, I don’t feel like cooking dinner, please just be nice to me tonight. But parents whopractice true transparency with their children are usually those on the verge of a nervous breakdown—it is something to be guarded against. I turn partially around. “Have a yogurt.”
    â€œI already had a yogurt.”
    I take a deep breath. “All right. One cookie. Just one.” I distrust any mother who says she never bribes her children.
    Suspicious, Phoebe nevertheless grabs a double-stuffed Oreo, the triumph magnified by the knowledge that her sister has not scored a similar treat. I watch her turn and hurry out. Her hair is pulled up into a ponytail on top of her head and even from a distance I can see the